Doorway to the Future

It is disquieting to look upon the river for the first time, for one is never prepared for the things that partake of infinity. Mark the steady current, listen to the soft rhythm of the waves.

It's like some cosmic timepiece patiently counting the centuries, ensuring that we keep our appointments among the stars. Kneel here in the sparse sand and dip your hand into the warm water. For a moment, you are one with a fisherman near Paducah, who snatches his protesting quarry from the dark safety of the riverbed.

For this instant of time, you are a brother to a young boy south of Memphis, who stands knee-deep in the water and tempts his dog to follow. And the river does not end where the land ends.

This floating twig may one day come ashore at Rio or Gibraltar. London lies downstream in Shanghai, for this is the doorway to the world. The National Broadcasting Company in cooperation with the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation presents Doorway to the World, the seventh in a series of programs, Heritage Over the Land, describing the remarkable changes

that have lately come to be American South. In order to document this 20th century revolution, NBC correspondent Henry Cassidy made a trip through the South and recorded the voices and the sounds that have accompanied the changes.

Some subtle, some as compelling as a clap of thunder. Today, Mr. Cassidy reports on the chain of rivers that feed down to New Orleans and the part they play in the Southern Renaissance. Mr. Cassidy.

For a starting place, let me take you to the office of Bob Massey of the International Harvesting Company in Memphis, Tennessee. We could see across the river into Arkansas south almost to Mississippi. Mr. Massey had seen many dawns across the river and often marked the shadows of sunset reaching out from the opposite shore.